


Scarred

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 08:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16512707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Grown-ups don’t say much about soulmates. “Nothing good ever came from looking,” Aunt Helen says, when she and Mama are shaking their heads over Cousin Ernestina who’s moved from Harlan to Hartford to Houston searching for the man wearing her scars.





	Scarred

**Author's Note:**

> Still in the vein of "possible soulmate AUs for Raylan and Boyd," here's a short one where you get your soulmate's scars and bruises on your own skin, suggested by ohana. It seems especially pertinent to Raylan and Boyd. Slight spoilers at the end for the season six finale.

Harlan folk don’t put much stock in soulmates, don’t pay it no nevermind that there’s someone else scrawled across their skin. “Another New York lawyer drops dead from black lung,” they joke at miners’ funerals, though New York could be Mexico or China or Peru. There are over four billion people in the world, after all—4.3 billion, Raylan knows, because Boyd read it in the encyclopedias Mr. Crowder got for the bookmobile last year—and most of them ain’t in Harlan, and most of Harlan ain’t ever getting out alive.

At least, that’s what Raylan’s mama always says, rubbing at the scar on her thumb that ain’t hers. (Raylan’s mama has plenty of scars all her own, but the one on her thumb is the only one she pays any mind. Some days Raylan’s daddy threatens to cut the thumb clean off, just so he can laugh when she threatens to leave.)

Grown-ups don’t say much about soulmates. “Nothing good ever came from looking,” Aunt Helen says, when she and Mama are shaking their heads over Cousin Ernestina who’s moved from Harlan to Hartford to Houston searching for the man wearing her scars.

“Soulmates ain’t meant for folks like us,” Mrs. Crowder tells them, flipping through the pages of a glossy magazine, and Raylan is never sure if she means folks too poor for a ticket to Hartford, or folks like her husband and Raylan’s daddy, who like to break men’s knees and laugh when they’re spitting blood.

Harlan folk don’t put much stock in soulmates, so Raylan never says a word.

Raylan doesn’t remember his first scar. He’s got ‘em all over, by ten, skinned knees and scabs on his knuckles and the jagged one on his thigh where Jerusha Plimson shoved him hard into Mr. McCleary’s fence and he’d gotten tangled in the barbed wire. He’s not even sure which ones are his, anymore, can’t recall if he scraped his knuckles punching Elmore Gilroy in the teeth or if that scar is his soulmate’s to claim.

Mostly it’s just scars. They say that if you’re hurt bad enough, sometimes your soulmate will hurt, too. Raylan wonders if his soulmate felt it, the day Arlo broke Raylan’s arm.

Raylan learns his numbers counting up his mama’s scars, and it ain’t long before he can start a tally of his own. His daddy is always happy to add to the score. It becomes a habit, counting scrapes and bruises and scars, his own and everybody else that crosses his path. Of course, nobody stays long enough for Raylan to finish. Well, almost nobody, that is.

It ain’t surprising, then, that he’d know Boyd Crowder’s scars like he knows his own.

It ain’t surprising, the day Boyd falls off the school roof—too stupid to turn down a dare, too cocky to climb off the roof without a victory whoop that sends him wobbling off the ridge pole and down—and Raylan feels the thud echo through his bones. The wind’s knocked clear out of him, but no one notices, the entire playground rushing over to see if Boyd Crowder had died.

He hadn’t. He’d broken his arm, though, because Raylan knew just how that felt.

Boyd never realizes, far as Raylan can tell, not even once they’ve started in the mines and Boyd’s new scars are all dark with coal dust. Boyd’s family never taught him to count every crack and thud and flinch the way Raylan’s did. Boyd never realizes, even when he’s the one who gets Raylan drunk on warm beer and drives him up to the lake and drinks nearly an entire jar of moonshine before he works up the courage to put his scarred hand over Raylan’s.

Raylan laughs, drunk and dog-tired and _happy_ for the first time since he can remember, maybe, since the last time he swung a bat or the first time Mr. Crowder came to the school with a whole bus of books. Soulmates ain’t meant for folks like us, he thinks, and kisses Boyd Crowder before Boyd has time to lose his nerve and run away.

They’re nineteen, and Raylan can strip Boyd naked, can count his scars all up and down Boyd’s scrawny frame. He takes his time, lingers over the ones too faint to see, the bruises that only Raylan knows were ever there. _Soulmate_ , Raylan thinks, and keeps his head down so Boyd can’t read it in his eyes.

Then the mountain collapses and mine caves in, and black lung won’t have time to kill them because they’re both going to die a thousand feet underground at nineteen, buried in coal. Boyd trips and Raylan’s knee cracks in sympathy. He drags Boyd to his feet and they’re running again, and Raylan can’t tell his skin from Boyd’s, doesn’t know if it’s him wheezing or Boyd’s lungs filling with coal dust and choking for air, feels the bones in his hand grind together and can’t tell which of them is squeezing too hard.

They make it out and the crew surrounds them, shouting about how they’d thought the boys had died.

They hadn’t. Someone’s hand is broken, though, and Raylan’s knee will never be the same.

After that, Boyd talks about leaving Harlan, talks about pooling their money and moving to New York or Cincinnati or DC. Raylan traces the invisible line of a scar on his bottom lip—Mike Graves got one good hit in, that was all, and somewhere Graves’s soulmate is wearing his scars—and listens. _Soulmate_ , he thinks, running his fingers over the scars on Boyd’s knuckles.

 _Soulmate_ , two weeks later, when he finds out Boyd’s given their money—invested it, he says, _Raylan, darling, trust me, it’s all part of the plan_ —to Peleg Dunston, scheming to steal machinery from Black Pike, has suggested to Dunston that Raylan’s daddy might be willing to help break some knees, if Raylan asked.

Raylan counts up the scars on Boyd’s fingers for the last time, bites his lip where it had split and feels the thud echo through his bones when he walks away.

Soulmates ain’t meant for folks like us, Mrs. Crowder said, and Raylan was never sure if—never sure if Boyd could feel it, that day, could feel his broken hand shake and his chest cave in and his ribs shatter when Raylan walked away.

His hand aches, sometimes, just before it rains. Raylan stops counting his scars.

* * *

It’s years later, that Raylan visits Ava and meets Zachariah, that he plays race cars with the boy and can’t help counting up the one cut on Zachariah’s finger, the scrapes on his chubby knees. Somewhere out in the wide world—seven billion people now, and what are the odds in that—Zachariah Crowder has a soulmate with his scars scrawled across their skin. Nothing good ever came from looking, he doesn’t say, because it’s up to the boy to learn whether or not that’s true. He rubs his hand, then, feels the winter coming in his knee when he calls the office and tells them he’ll need a few more days.

He catches the next flight out to Kentucky. He counts the scars on Boyd’s hands, the bruises Arlo had put on Raylan that no one else can see. “Tell me how you got this one, Raylan,” Boyd says through the phone, tapping his chin, and Raylan laughs, sober and tired and happy for the first time in years, maybe, since the last good shoot out and the first time Boyd covered Raylan’s hand with his.

“Boyd, I think that one’s all yours,” he replies, but he doesn’t hang up the phone. He brushes a hand over the faded scar on his own chin, and he doesn't walk away.


End file.
